ST. LOUIS — The long awaited and much anticipated debut of defenseman Scott Perunovich came on Tuesday and everyone seemed excited about the game except his teammates.
If they were, it didn't show in their play. A desultory start to the game turned into a desultory middle before it reached an ignominious end when Arizona’s 30th-ranked power play got its second goal of the night with 6:08 to go in the third period to send the Blues to their fourth straight loss and fifth in the past six games. Arizona won, 3-2, to let the air out of any enthusiasm about Perunovich's first game after Barrett Hayton got his second goal of the game, tipping in a shot by Shayne Gostisbehere.
Still, the game could be a turning point in the season, as the Blues got forward Oskar Sundqvist back from the torn ACL that has kept him out almost eight months, got defenseman Torey Krug back from his COVID-19 case and saw Perunovich play his first NHL game. The second-round pick by the Blues in the 2018 draft had a point in all 12 AHL games he had played in after barely playing in the past year and a half because of injuries and the pandemic.
If the Blues’ previous two losses, on late third-period goals to powerhouses Carolina and Edmonton were crushing, this one brought a whole new definition to the term. Arizona came into the game with one win in 15 games and had six players on injured reserve and two others on the COVID-19 list. They were a bad team to begin with and were down players.
Coach Craig Berube said before the game that he had told his players not to look past the struggling Coyotes.
“For sure, no doubt about it,” he said. “You don't want to get in to that. We've got to understand that the work has to come first. ... Bring the puck back, let's make plays. We need to go one way and go north and play a straight line game and work extremely hard. I'll guarantee that team's going to give you everything they've got. They're going to work hard. They're not going to go out there and not give an effort, and they're going to pressure you. We've got to be ready. You're exactly right. We've talked to the team about it and it's going to be discussed again tonight.”
The message never really seemed to get through.
The Blues managed to fall behind 1-0 on a power-play goal by defenseman Kyle Capobianco, playing his second game of the season. The Blues couldn’t do anything on their first two power plays but got even when Jordan Kyrou finished off a two-on-one break by taking a pass from Ryan O’Reilly and chipping the puck between goalie Scott Wedgewood’s legs, off the post and, eventually, over the line.
It was the fifth straight game with a point for Kyrou, and gave him five in the past five games, while it was noteworthy for O’Reilly: His first point in six games after returning from COVID-19.
The Blues fell behind again, 2-1, on an unassisted goal by Hayton. Robert Thomas overskated a drop pass from Krug and Hayton picked it up, came in alone on Jordan Binnington, deked, got around him and scored his first goal of the season.
The Blues got even again, with O’Reilly getting another assist. With the teams playing four-on-four after Klim Kostin of the Blues and Clayton Keller of the Coyotes took turns cross-checking each other. Twelve seconds after play resumed, a stretch pass from Pavel Buchnevich fond O’Reilly at the opposite blueline, and he came in two on one on Wedgewood. O’Reilly fed Krug who scored his third goal of the season.
The start of the Perunovich Era found the youngster going directly to the Blues’ second power-play unit in his first NHL game.
“A guy like Perun, that's what he is, “ Berube said, “so we want to put him in the best spot to be successful. He's up here playing, let's see what he can do.”
Perunovich had a point in all 12 of the AHL games he played in with Springfield after not playing since the premature end of the 2020 NCAA season. He almost made the team out of camp but the Blues didn’t mind him getting a little AHL seasoning after his long gap between games. They would have called him up sooner but the COVID-19 that hit six players on the team starting in late October put the team in a salary cap bind. Finally, on Monday, enough players were ready to go again that players could be sent back to Springfield and Kyle Clifford could be first waived, then traded, to clear the cap space for Perunovich to begin his NHL career.
It’s not going to be perfect out of the box, but what Perunovich showed in the preseason and the AHL has the team eager for him to get started.
“It's going to be different for sure because training camp's training camp,” Berube said, “and the regular season is different, but he's got great vision obviously and his puck play is really high end. I expect him to move the puck well and he's got to defend. It's different than the American Hockey League. You're playing against men up here. It's quicker and it's more competitive, so he's really going to have to compete tonight without the puck.”
